The Wine Dark Sea
by OMhypothesis
Summary: In the lull after their long battle, the remaining crew of Serenity come to terms with their own long-suppressed needs and hopes for the future. Rated M for eventual language and adult situations. Reviews and suggestions more than welcome. EDIT: On hiatus for the moment. Massive apologies to my gorgeous readers.
1. Chapter 1

The familiar, stuttering hum of the ship was his favorite lullaby.

Deep in the infinite dark, Serenity shifted. In zero gravity there was no forwards or backwards, only onwards. Zoe manned the helm above them. Above was a relative term, he thought drowsily. If his bunk was in the belly of the beast, Zoe held the reins.

Zoe's eyes were dry and scratchy since she'd shed her meager reservoir of tears. She kept a vial of saline in her brassiere now, cold chemical comfort on those long lonely nights when relief didn't come and she stared at the bulkhead until her corneas felt like sandpaper. Malcolm didn't ask her about these things, and she didn't tell him. He just knew. They'd weathered it all before.

His own physical injuries were fading. The sickly bruises over his torso, washing out to a mottled green. Abrasions, torn ligaments, the burst capillary in his right eye. He felt them only when he looked in the mirror. Their recent rip across the galaxy seemed like a fever dream when he lay back and closed his eyes. Everything the same but everything changed. His head pounded dully, a roaring in his ears.

The overhead panel snicked open. He snapped awake. Thin bare feet padding silently down the ladder. A rope of tangled hair. "Little death-dealer," he rasped. "Is it my time already?"

She cocked her head, peering at him with one bright uncovered eye. He slid his revolver back beneath the mattress. "Bad dreams," she muttered at last.

He sat up, his body creaking and popping. "Where's Doc?" he asked, rubbing a hand over his wild hair.

"With Kaylee."

She had slipped into that unconscious stillness that so unnerved everyone. Mal noted it, saw by it how deeply upset she was. He waited for the moment to pass.

"Can I stay?" she asked softly, motionless.

He sighed, too tired to process and express all the reasons why she shouldn't be here. He snagged his ragged covers from where they huddled at the bottom of the bed and patted the lumpy futon. She waded over and he brushed the soaked hair away from her clammy forehead. "Just for tonight," he warned. He lay down again, waited for her to curl up warm against his back, and they slept.

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In the artificial morning, as the ship's biorhythms were bringing up the lights, he wandered up to the cockpit to relieve Zoe. He yawned into his tin cup of coffee, rubbed a speck of sleep from his eye with one callused digit. Zoe dozed deceptively, her brown hand steady on the till. "Morning, sunshine," he offered cheerfully enough. She cracked open one bloodshot, beautiful eye.

"I know it ain't my place, sir, but you could use a washing something fierce," she remarked. "Smelt you coming." He waved her off. "Healthy coat of dirt never did harm," he said.

"Just try not to attract any scavengers," she said with a wrinkled nose, and made her way down. He slowly felt over the system with one hand, slurping his black brew with the other.

A patter of dancing feet below in the mess. River naturally moved in silence, so the noise was her way of showing consideration. Feeling happy today, he gathered.

"_How do you take it?_" she chirped to someone, glass and metal clinking.

"_Where'd you get that sugar?_" Jayne demanded. Irritable and suspicious.

"_Thank you, I don't care for sweets_," said Zoe politely.

"_Well I'll have some. Ain't like I'm going to get more any time soon_," gruffed Jayne. Mal heard the smacking sound of someone blowing a kiss.

"_Sugar!_" sang River, and dissolved into giggles.

"_Gorramit…_" The sound of someone picking up a coffee cup. A momentary lull.

"_Mmmmmm,_" said Zoe exaggeratedly, and River laughed some more. Mal grinned and leaned back in his seat.

Maybe today was going to be a good day.

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She liked to sneak up behind him. Creep like a thief, swim like a shark, float like a ghost. She liked the way the artery in his neck jumped when she startled him. The quick sharp smell of his adrenaline spiking, subsiding. The bared teeth smile disguised as a snarl. Some days she snapped her teeth back at him, playing wolf games.

She liked the way his broad hand rested easy on the switchboard, like a man resting his hand on a lover's thigh. She liked him best of all in this still state, the shape of his mind relaxed, all his feelers stretched out and dozing on the structures of reality. She thought of Book, a warrior with a priest's facade. Malcolm Reynolds was Shepherd Book's negative. He covered his outsides with dirt and violence to disguise the peace within. She floated in the borrowed stillness of his mind, soothed and gentled like a child in a tide-pool.

She leapt over the cockpit onto him, jamming the coffee spoon against his jugular and growling into his face. His fingers were on the trigger of his gun and away again before she hit his lap. _O this glorious lightning game! _ His heart pounded against her body and her brain like waves crashing and she shrieked with laughter and delight. He tipped his angular face back, eyebrows up, and waited in silence for her hysteria to gust through.

"Ready to fly, darlin'?" he drawled at last, and she wriggled around to perch on his knee, her body a tremolo of nerves and joy. He leaned into the controls. His collarbone rested flush against the blades of her back. _O, this cleansing ache._

He placed her hand on an instrument like an old-fashioned joystick, but infinitely more sensitive. She'd done this before, so many times, so many! But connected to him, by touch and breath, she felt the roll of the ship through her fingertips, the dark threads of space in which they lay suspended, the desperate drag of the stars, the tiny flames of life housed like tender embryos in the fragile shell of Serenity's hull.

A crackle on the closed intercom broke their delicate dance. _Inara._ She knew it even before the voice hit her ear. She knew it through the roil of Mal's mind.

"_Captain Reynolds, may I speak with you_?"

"Sure thing, Inara," he said easily. His brain was a hurricane, whirling, whirling. "What can I do you for?"

_"I'd appreciate it if we could speak face to face, Captain."_

"Well then." He laughed lightly, finger hard on the transmit button, and River cringed away from the bitter blackness beneath. "I'll be down directly."


	2. Chapter 2

****Oh, you lovely readers. I see you peeking in. Leave me a kind word to warm my love-starved heart. **

**Late disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Firefly, Serenity, or any of the characters. I just love this story and want more of it.****

Mal entered Inara's cabin with the air of a rebel approaching the firing squad. In Inara's defense, this was pretty much Mal's default attitude going in to any uncertain or possibly dangerous situation. Whenever he approached this particular territory objects had a tendency to come hurtling towards his head, so he figured it was wise to start out with his spine straight.

He had never tried much to conceal how ill-at-ease he was in her space. Even having left and come back, she'd managed to transform the shuttle into something glamorous. The little room, softened and draped and lit in fuzzy golden light, dripping of luxury and sensuality, might as well have been another universe when compared to the rest of Serenity. He always stood at the entrance with the uncomfortable feeling that he was tracking something smelly in on the carpet and everyone was too polite to say anything. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "You wanted to see me?" he said.

"Captain," Inara murmured, turning and adjusting her clothing in beautiful, choreographed motions. She always gave the impression of making time for you, of carving an intimate moment out of her otherwise busy schedule, even if Mal knew she hadn't had any work for a month. Once it had made him feel special. Now he knew better. He slid his hands into his pockets and waited.

"I have an unusual request." She paused delicately, lowering her eyes in that deceptively deferential way she had that made her dark lashes look so long. "An old friend of mine in New Dunsmuir is holding a summit, and desires my presence for several days. I understand it is an inconvenient journey, but I was hoping you might assist me." She peeked up at him, her gorgeous gaze expertly dissecting his reaction in real time.

"Beaumonde's a long ways out from here," he said shortly. "And we don't exactly have a hoard to spend on fuel these days."

"This… request," she replied carefully, "it pays well. Well enough that I could reimburse you for our fuel usage. Plus a… pilot's fee."

"Oh?" His dark brows narrowed.

Her voice lowered, confidential, seductive. "Let's just say it would be worth both our whiles, Mal."

_More whoring_, he thought, rankled. _Even after all this, nothing changes_. He waited for the old, familiar angst. He saw in Inara's face that she was steeled and ready for him to begin shouting, but he found to his weary surprise that he just couldn't muster the energy. What was one more bloated diplomat in the grand scheme of things? If Inara wanted to dive back into those shark-infested waters, so be it. He had his own business to be about.

"Fine," he said, turning to leave. "Ten percent to the crew, plus whatever our energy costs end up being. I'll set a course." Inara's mouth shut behind him with an audible pop, but she didn't try to argue as he walked away. The door closed with a hum and a sigh.

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"Cap'n?"

He paused, stifling a snarl. He took a moment to arrange his face into a bland sort of configuration before he turned. "Aye?" he said, nicely enough. Kaylee flinched anyways.

"Oh, it's just… I heard tell we might stop near Beaumonde," she said, fidgeting. The endearing smudge of grease on her chin dared him to be surly.

"You heard tell, huh?" He cast a dark look back at the shuttle door. "News sure does travel fast around here." He patted his pockets irritably. "So what can I getcha?"

"Seein' as how we ain't had a proper stop in a few months, I was kind of hopin' Simon and I could take a few days, is all," she responded brightly. "Got some things I'd like to do, and I could pick up those couplers we've been needin'."

"Doesn't do to be movin' around in the cities too much, Kaylee-bell. We're all a little too hot for our britches right now, if you take my meaning. Doc especially so. If you'll tell me what you need, I can probably manage it without you stretching your necks out."

"Oh, it ain't… it ain't them sort of things, Cap'n." Her cheeks were pink. He gave her a scrutinizing look.

"How about you explain it to me then, as I'm a mite slow today." He folded his arms. This should be good.

"The truth is… we were thinking of maybe… registering." She was red as a strawberry by now. He thought about that one for a minute.

"Registering. Like, for a…"

"That's it, Cap'n. That's exactly it."

Mal had a lot of virtues, but his way with words was never one of them. "You nestin', Kaylee?"

"What?! Oh, no, Cap'n. No, no, no!" She dropped her horrified eyes for a moment, then muttered. "Leastaways I don't think…"

"The thing is," said Simon Tam, materializing behind Mal in an irritatingly familiar way, "I'd like Kaylee to be provided for if that situation ever does occur." Simon ran carefully kept hands through his dark handsome hair in a gesture that often made Mal want to sucker punch him, just on principle. "Not that I'm against the family philosophy," Mal drawled. "But did ya ever think maybe, just maybe, if the pair of you showed up at a license shop and started entering birth dates, you might just bring the whole gorramed Alliance straight down on our heads?"

"Of course I considered that!" snapped Simon. He then took a deep breath. "That is why," he continued peevishly, "I've already set up some alternate identities. New numbers, new dates. I've even made one for you, though I doubt you think you'd ever have to use it." He gave Mal a measured look. "You know, by now even you should have noticed that _I'm not stupid_."

"Oh aye, you're _brilliant _enough," Mal shot back, somehow managing to make it sound like an insult. He considered them both for a while. "Well, Doc, if you're bound and determined to make an honest woman out of my mechanic, then Lord knows I won't stop you. All I ask is that you try not to get yourselves arrested or shot, and," he turned his eye on Kaylee, "that you save me a seat when the time comes."

She favored him with a full-wattage grin. "Sure thing, Cap'n!" Then Simon kissed her temple, which changed her focus some.

Mal made his escape while Kaylee and Simon were still staring moonstruck into each other's eyes.

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She heard him grumbling on his way up the stairs. It wasn't a happy sound, but the petulant thunk of his boots on the metal made her smile anyway. She felt for his thoughts in the dark. The seas there were choppy and clouded, but the monsters below lay still.

His shadow fell over the cockpit. "Babies?" she said brightly.

"Never saw the point of 'em," he said absently. Then he looked at her sharp. "What've I told you about peeking!" Her laughter pealed like a bell.

The sound seemed to relax him. After a bit he said, "So, little bird, what's your position? You for 'em or against 'em?" She considered carefully. "They have interesting brains," she said at last. Now it was his turn to laugh. He reached out and mussed her hair. "You're an odd duck," he said, still chuckling.

She tilted her head against his hand until it fell to her nape. "Albatross," she chided.

"Hmm…?" His thumb moved against her hair, sending a sweet ache shooting down her spine.

"Specificity is a virtue, Captain." He goosed her, and moved away.

"We'll need to change coordinates, as we'll be heading to Beaumonde," he said. "You know how to pull up the galaxy maps?"

"Yes." He waited, his foot tapping. She didn't move. "Well?" She gestured to the board.

"Don't wave your hand at _me, I _already know how to do it," he snapped. "And I don't take kindly to… oh. You've already laid in the course." His mouth hung loose for a minute before his frustration rallied itself. "Why in the Sam Hill do I even bother to tell anyone anything?" he asked the universe at large. "It ain't like I'm in gorramn control." With that he stalked off the way he'd come, leaving behind a faint smell of gunpowder, and the tingling feeling of his hands on her skin.

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He was staring up, glass-eyed, at the bulkhead, with his hands behind his neck, when she ghosted into his room again.

"Bad dreams," she said softly.

"Yours or mine?" he replied without inflection. She smiled richly at him then, their understanding for once complete. He made a minute gesture. A surrender.

She climbed in beside him and he shut his eyes. She settled against his side and he threaded an arm around her wire-fine waist. He slept, and did not dream.


	3. Chapter 3

New Dunsmuir was a gem of a city.

And by that, Mal meant a rock dug up from a lifeless pit of volcanic crust, painstakingly polished and cut and sold to the highest bidder for far more than its true worth. Sure, it was shiny. A shiny sea-town full of white, shiny houses and sleek, shiny citizens with fat shiny bank accounts. Any oceanside city that didn't smell like fish was automatically ersatz in his mind, like that chalky ration powder the border traders tried to pass off as chocolate.

Still, the prospect of a beach and a marriage license (and a crate of secondhand ship parts from one of Beaumonde's junk cities) had Kaylee so lathered up it was a wonder she didn't wriggle out of that tiny yellow kimono. Doc seemed unable to focus, choosing instead to follow his lady love into the sunlight, one hand on the small of her back. He blinked and perspired like a man who had been stuck in a cave for half his natural life. This irritated Mal, who knew for a fact the boy had had a perfectly good shore leave six months ago. There was no call for dramatics.

Jayne celebrated their arrival by shoving his feet into his boots and wandering off to spend his money on booze, meat, and whores. Mal explained to Jayne that they probably weren't called whores in New Dunsmuir. Jayne expressed his opinion on that by issuing a leisurely fart into the ocean breeze.

Zoe hadn't wanted to leave _Serenity_. Mal, suspecting that Zoe's true intentions were to lay around the cockpit communing with Wash's ghost, began methodically but firmly locking up every hidey hole in the ship, before inexorably shuffling Zoe and River out into the port. As River cheerfully pulled Zoe around to peek at the different open-air stalls nearby, he hung back, gingerly fingering the edges of the excellently faked ID holo Simon had provided him.

According to this square of plastic, he was Benjamin Wilde, 34, mineral retrieval, independent consult, and export. His ship, the _Tethys _(Mal snorted), was a salvage purchased from a former employer ten years ago and paid off for the last two. Simon had even included a random inspection, suspicion of illegal stims, in 2515. The _Tethys_ and its crew had passed within normal limits, and its cargo, apart from one regrettable passenger's private storage, was clean. Benjamin Wilde's Alliance trade and transport permits were paid up for the next 24 months, and Benjamin Wilde was entitled to discounted docking fees at all Alliance spaceports. Ain't life fine and grand.

Mal stood stoically while the docking agent processed his information and totted up the charge. "Welcome back to New Dunsmuir, Mr. Wilde," the agent chirruped happily. "Will that go on a business account?"

"Chips," said Mal. The agent took the cash from his hand with a slightly raised eyebrow. "I never use credit anymore," Mal confided cozily. "The kinds of people you run into out there, they'll steal your passcode soon as look at ya."

"Oh-ho, gotcha," said the agent, winking cheerily. "Well, that's you done! Have a very pleasant visit."

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Leave it to Jayne to suss out the only bar in New Dunsmuir worthy of the name. Zoe could swear the man had some sort of homing instinct, one which drew him irresistibly towards cheap whisky and violence.

She'd spent an interesting, if not profitable, day with River and the Captain. It occurred to her that she wasn't generally in the habit of letting tiny white girls herd her, arm in arm, over unknown landscapes, but that was what had happened, with Malcolm Reynolds tailing behind sulkily like a mule with a toothache. River had effortlessly propelled the trio in and out of shops and establishments, charming the sophisticated natives with ease and picking a judicious amount of pockets along the way. Not enough to get caught, mind you. But enough to make a passel of purchases, most of which Zoe or Mal ended up wearing (or eating).

Zoe was sitting complacently now in the open air, letting a nimble-fingered stranger work her long black hair into tiny braids with silver beads, across the street from a comfortably divey bar whence Jayne had just vanished with a person he called his "lady friend." There was a rollicking sort of music playing out on the deck and it was making River twitch. The long, colorful scarves River had swathed over Zoe and herself danced sympathetically in the ocean breeze.

Her main comfort lay in the fact that River had talked Mal into the same treatment. He stared stonily at the cobblestones as one barber's assistant shaved his scratchy face and the other trimmed his scraggly hair. He was also, seemingly of his own volition, wearing some kind of short-sleeved, breezy shirt, with nary a suspender in sight. It was amazing, Zoe reflected, what threats of violence from a 90 lb woman could achieve.

"Ack!" Mal exclaimed, abruptly standing and brushing off bits of fuzz from his new finery. The poor creature who had been attempting to press a hand-mirror on him backed away slowly. Zoe eyed the scene with lazy amusement, lulled by the sensation of being beautified. Mal was looking around the street cagily, searching out an escape route. "They'll want payin'," she pointed out before he completely took to his heels.

He dug grumpily in his pockets, coming up with what seemed like way too much scratch for a cut and some beads. The stylist eyed his chips reproachfully, till River twirled forth out of nowhere, pressing a neat pile of tip money into the woman's beautifully manicured hands. Then River turned her attention to Mal. Her face was extremely serious. She was a woman with important matters to discuss.

"I want an oyster," River said, pointing emphatically to the bar. "And a _dance_."

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The bar was smoky and jazzy and entirely too clean. Mal hunched his shoulders uncomfortably. He had, he felt, been very patient. In fact he had been a perfect gentleman all day long. Doing everything the ladies wanted, saying nothing even when they started undressing him and shaving his whiskers, letting them poke and prod and spend all his money without so much as a single snarl or grimace. He had been, all in all, better than they deserved, and he hoped they knew that. He raised his eyes to his companions smugly.

River had her arms crossed, feet tapping. She mouthed something at him exaggeratedly.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll getcha damn oys-chure. I'll getcha a whole gorramn bucket of the things, so hold yer freaking horses," he muttered peevishly, moving forward. "Barkeep!" he snapped. "The ladies would like to try the local kwee-zine." He aimed a magnanimous sweep of his arm at the ladies in question.

"Huh?" said the barkeep.

"I want an oyster," piped River sweetly.

"Oh yeah, sure thing," said the barkeep. He reached under the bar into the ice, pulled out an enormous gray shell, and cracked it for her. She reached for it, then paused. She examined it minutely.

"This oyster," she said, her voice solemn, "is not dead." The barkeep gaped at her. "No," he said carefully. "It's a fresh one." River turned her eyes to Mal helplessly.

"Like this, honey," he said, shucking the thing out of its shell with the tip of his pocket knife. She stared at him in horror. "No?" he asked. Screw it. He slurped it down himself.

"You _ate_ it!" River hissed, scandalized.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah I did," he rejoined, a ghoulish grin growing on his freshly shaven face.

"_Gross!_"

He rubbed his tummy, thoroughly enjoying her disgust. Zoe shook her head at them both. "Say," said Zoe, "I don't suppose you have any _fried _oysters laying around?" The barkeep nodded in obvious relief. "Well, how about you bring us some of those, and a pitcher of beer."

"You got it, ma'am."

The music on the deck apparently originated from a little band of players. Mal followed River's gaze to a young man with an electric violin. Her sandaled feet were tapping restlessly.

"Heard tell you could pick a tune, once upon a time," he said, close to her ear. She turned her head slightly. Her sigh, half longing and half resentment, washed over him. He pressed his fingertips lightly against her spine, a spark of comfort passing between them.

"I want to dance," she repeated, almost angrily. He opened his mouth, meaning to protest, but she cut him off. "I don't _care_," she snapped. "We'll do the ones you know. I know them too." He gave up, stepping back until he could stretch out his hand in offering.

"Alright," he said, palm up. She slid her slender hand into his, and he whirled her onto the floor.


	4. Chapter 4

The Captain proved fairly handy with a simple two-step, his hands together with her hands, his body moving forward quick-quick, slow… until the musicians caught on and suddenly she was being whirled out, then back in, then they were moving in a side by side sweep, arms neatly catty-cornered across each other's bodies. He even managed a little heel-toe as their pace increased. She pressed into the frame of his arms, challenging his lead, suddenly exhilarated. He laughed and picked her up by the waist, swinging her round until her skirt billowed.

At last he deposited her at a table, where a massive basket of fried food had appeared. She dug in with an appetite while he hunkered over, pretending to catch his breath. Then he grabbed the silent Zoe out of her corner by the arm, pulling her out onto the floor.

"No," Zoe protested. "No sir, you let me go!"

"C'mon, Zo. Little cross-step with the captain?" He twirled the lady into place, then slapped the sole of his boot on the floor in challenge. Zoe rolled her eyes. He click-stomped his way around her, then held the palm of his hand flat forward, eye-level.

"You're not going to let up until I do this, are you?" she sighed. He grinned toothily. She slapped her right palm against his. Their feet swung out crossways, mirrored diagonals. The band quickly caught on, playing something 1/8th time and letting Mal and Zoe's feet serve as percussion. River was absorbed, an oyster hanging halfway to her open mouth.

They tapped their way into it, and River felt the contours of his soul settling deeper into her own framework. The verse pushed, a slow and horrid slide toward entropy, but he pushed back, Sisyphus at the bottom of the stone, trying to put right what was long wrong. At the edges of his people's grief, ruin, lethargy, and despair, he placed his unconscious weight, struggled to maintain that elaborate scaffold of belief in the past and hope for the future. River had been on intimate terms with the wretchedness of the human psyche. It made her ill. It brought her dinner up more nights than not. But this… the wonder and the horror of it was, she had believed too. If he pushed the rock to the top of the mountain enough times, would it not stay? Would something not… catch?

Zoe laughed, leaning her long body into Mal's stiff embrace. He panted and chuckled and leaned back on his heels. He turned to the table, caught River's eye, and the contrasts between feeble light and overwhelming dark caught her in their teeth and shook her.

"Don't like 'em?" he asked, close to her again. Zoe had collapsed nearby, laughing. "What?" said River foggily.

"Them oysters. Are they no good?" His face, his ragged breath, the bright lick of the violin overwhelmed her. Her eyes filled with tears.

"Aw, hon." He sat, paused, hesitantly gathered her in. The music trailed down, the bar going still.

"I can't play that happy music anymore," she confessed wretchedly. "I can't play anything real."

"Well, sure you can," he said slowly. He thought for a minute, checking his own tone for condescension. She felt him turning like cogs in a clock. "You need a bit of practice, maybe." His fingers brushed her cheeks. She wept. "I could get ye a fiddle," he said at last. "A nice one. Any one. Please don't cry."

The young violist had crept up to them. He offered his instrument with a tiny gesture. She shook her head. "You play then!" she said to Mal, suddenly savage. "You do it, if you think you can!"

He blinked at her. "I ain't much a one for bowin'," he said uncertainly. She turned her head from him. She could feel Zoe's eyes on the pair of them, but she rejected it all. It was all horse shit, as Jayne would say. She felt Mal stand, begin to walk away, and the bitter black waters of her own heart rose.

"Can I see that for a minute?" Mal murmured gently to someone across the floor. She closed her eyes and her brain, refusing to look, but her ears were open.

The sound of something hollow passing between hands. The scrape of a stool being pulled up close. She held her crumbling ground. The clunk of a hollow box on bony knees.

She looked at him. He had the guitar, but instead of shouldering it, he had laid it across his lap like a dulcimer. She watched him pick his way across gingerly, tweaking the keys, letting the bones in his ear adjust to an old process. He plucked each string gently, as though it would break. At last he seemed to settle into the instrument, bracing it agains his ribcage like a new romance.

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The sunlight faded into a deep amber as the moon turned toward Kalidasa. The night insects had begun their discourse when Kaylee breezed into the bar, Simon in tow.

Simon felt as though he were wading through a dream. In his pocket he held a little data square, permission from the Alliance for a union between Roger Toms and Katie Lee Cook. He was, for all intents and purposes, a married man.

In the cozy darkness of the bar, a man was singing in a clear young baritone.

_I gave my love a cherry _

_that had no stone_

_I gave my love a chicken_

_that had no bone..._

Simon blinked, noticing how still his young bride had gone. He followed her line of sight to a table, where a certain Benjamin Wilde, formerly Malcolm Reynolds, strummed a guitar while a young woman looked on, wonder in her eyes and drying tears on her cheeks. Somewhere a violin started a sweet aching harmony.

Zoe picked up the next refrain, and her voice was shockingly sweet.

_...How can there be a story_

_that has no end_

_How can there be a baby_

_with no crying..._

Mal saw them then, and his fingers stilled on the strings. An uncharacteristic and somehow too-intimate flush spread across his scarred face. He coughed sheepishly, letting the guitar tilt against him. "Not sure I remember the rest correctly," he apologized.

"How can there?" asked River, her black mood gone. "How can there be those things?"

"It's a riddle, _bao bei_," he said, flashing her a blinding smile. He saw her eyes flicker, and added, "No cheating, now."


	5. Chapter 5

Inara was bored.

The skyrise suite was stunning, the resort a breathtaking jewel of modern aesthetics. Her room stepped down into a heated jade pool with lotus blossoms floating on the water. She could walk up cool stone steps and dry herself by lying naked on the high bed, surrounded by a view of the New Dunsmuir ocean. The sheets were real linen, a product that could only be obtained in controlled markets at a staggering cost. The climate-control piped in rare perfumes that sold for thousands of credits an ounce.

She was _incredibly_ bored. Though she would cut off her own foot before admitting it, traveling with _Serenity_ had tainted her cultural palate. What was safe, standardized New Dunsmuir to the dust-bowls of the border planets, the biting ice peaks, the alien landscapes still un-Terraformed and hostile to man? What was an ocean view, albeit a spectacular one, to the sight of the stars melting as a Firefly-class ship shot, trembling, into light speed?

And the senator. Oh, gods. If she looked at him logically, he was a handsome man. A luxurious man. His thick hair was carefully tousled, his muscles sculpted, his stomach flat and iron-hard. His clothes were meticulously tailored to set off his surgically perfect form. His skin was just tan enough to set off a line of glowing white teeth, teeth which he bared in strategic smiles to everyone of consequence. He was the picture of health.

He was also a passionate man, aggressive in an attractive, alpha-male kind of way. He held no qualms about expressing that passion all over the apartment, literally sweeping her off her feet and carrying her to a convenient surface when it suited him. She thrilled to it, responded hotly, but it was reflexive. His passion was one-noted, his attempts at tenderness strained. Their conversations were brilliant and witty and tepid. When they went out together, she found her thoughts wandering dangerously.

If the senator was a Victoria-class cruiser, Malcolm Reynolds was an economy skiff, Inara found herself musing absently. His hair was unstyled and was often sweat-ridden. His belly was pale and scored with old shrapnel holes. His arms were wiry rather than built. His nose was crooked from being broken and badly set; his teeth were worn down and a little uneven. There wasn't room on his stripped down frame for extra meat or fat, although she suspected there was more than a little gristle sticking stubbornly to his bones. Next to the senator Mal would look scrawny and undernourished, but she knew who would win in a fight. And she knew, to her chagrin, that the senator's fire and flash, which seemed to burn so briskly between them, was nothing to the hidden magma under Mal's ragged crust.

So why, then, was it so hard to extract that heat from him? And why would she want to, if she knew that it would burn her to a crisp? Her usual methods of inspiring a man barely seemed to break his stride. When, exasperated, she pushed harder, he flared up like hot ash. Where she wanted him to be tender, he was scalding. Where most men knelt to worship, he paced restlessly. So she would retreat to her shuttle and curse him under her breath, reminding herself that she hated to be uncomfortable. No matter how strong the attraction, she was a dancer, and he was uneven ground.

She thought these things over, and settled them in her mind, and gradually returned to peace. She opened her lovely eyes and surveyed her pocket of paradise.

Good _god_, it was boring. The senator would be in session for the rest of the day. Perhaps it was time for Inara to head down to the beach and play with fire.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

His heart was stopped. Kaylee, apropos of nothing, had just shot up from under the weight of his arm with an unholy shriek, and killed him.

No matter how many codes he presided over, Simon Tam (aka Roger Toms) would never get used to a screaming woman. Whenever River wept, his blood sugar dipped dangerously low. When Zoe yelled, it produced a momentary arrhythmia. When Kaylee screamed, full on tachycardia. The organ in question jerked haphazardly, trying to resume a normal beat. "_Guai guai long de dong_!" he managed weakly.

"Simon!" trilled Kaylee happily. "Look who's here!" He risked a glance. It turned out to be the Companion. Good. That's a good reason to cause his spirit to flee his body. Let's all shout about it. "_Nin hao ma_," he replied carefully, leaning back in his sun-chair and forcing himself to draw slow, even breaths.

"_Hao bu hao_," said Inara, with her enigmatic little smile. Zoe surveyed the party from somewhere further down the beach, where she was in the process of getting a glorious tan. The shrieking did not appear to have fazed her; rather, her expression was a mixture of boredom and faint humor. "Where are the others?" Inara inquired, looking around.

"Oh, the Captain took River and Jayne to New Huntsville, to pick up them parts? You know him, he says you never can be too careful. And he said mayhap he can stop by the distillery and get us a couple bottles of celebration," said Kaylee, flushing happily.

"I see," said Inara, smothering her disappointment. "I probably won't see them before I have to get back, then."

"They'll be along soon enough," Kaylee trilled. "And look!" She held out her hand for Inara's inspection.

Simon had bought her a ring, which on the Inner Planets would seem terribly quaint and chauvinistic. Besides, he couldn't afford much after the past five years. It was simple, a platinum band with tiny writing and no stones. Kaylee was taken all out of proportion with it. She wore it everywhere, even purchasing a little chain so she could wear it while working, or in the shower. The shower… Simon was momentarily distracted by an image of her last night, wearing her ring and rivulets of water and nothing else.

"_Shao mei_," said Inara warmly. "It's lovely." Suddenly all three women were looking at the doctor. He squirmed uncomfortably. "Ain't it though!" said Kaylee, with a last fond glance. "So romantic. This town's chock full of romance. Even the Captain got a little sentimental!" she chuckled. Inara looked at her inquiringly. "You'll never guess what we caught him doin' last night!"

"A woman?" Inara guessed, feeling a little pang in her gut.

"Nooo!" Kaylee chortled, finding that a fine joke. "He was singin'!"

"Singing?" Inara was nonplussed.

"Just like a bird in a tree!" Kaylee confirmed. "He had him a guitar and a nice little audience. Zoe'll tell you. Am I saying true, Zo?" Zoe waved her hand at them, nodding.

"That must have been…" Inara paused, smiling. "Well, no offense, but it must have been awful."

"He has quite a good voice, actually," Simon offered suddenly. "I'll agree, I was surprised too." Simon's face was troubled. He couldn't help remembering the rest, how River had been transfixed, how Mal had seemed to be singing just to her. It was probably nothing, but…

"Well, I thought it was nice," said Kaylee defensively. "I _love_ a man who can sing. I'd jest sit on his knee and let him serenade me all day long!" She hummed a tune, her expressive face going dreamy as she pictured it. Simon felt he was being put on notice.

"Is that so?" he said, waggling an eyebrow at her. "I suppose I shall have to sing to you, then." Kaylee stared at him. "Can you play too?" she asked, a little breathless.

"I can," he declared proudly. "Music is, after all, part of a first-class education." Inara supposed this was the time to say something witty and admiring, but nothing she did now could compare to the expression of pure female delight that had spread across Kaylee's face. Simon, startled, began to blush.

"Break it up, lovebirds," called Zoe, stalking over the sand. "It's time for lunch."

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Jayne, Mal reflected, was a strange man. Initially homicidal at having been dragged from his debauched love nest that morning, he had simmered down into general crankiness round about ten o'clock, when the shuttle touched down by the Huntsville trade house. Since then he had been keeping River entertained with raunchy jokes, really terrible ones, which she found utterly hilarious. Her bell-like laughter caught the attention of the various salesmen, who followed her bright form with avid eyes.

"Say, you ever read about Custer's last stand?" said Jayne conversationally.

"Uh-huh," said River, curious.

"You ever hear how the ground was all white afterward?"

"No…" she said slowly. "Why?"

"Because them indians, they kept c-"

"JAYNE!" roared Mal, cutting him off.

"Ahahah!" River snickered helplessly, having picked the punchline out of Jayne's sordid brains.

"NO. MORE." Mal shook a furious digit in Jayne's face. "That is totally inappropriate and you KNOW it!"

"Aww, she likes it. Doncha, sweetheart?" River fluttered her lashes at the mercenary, causing Mal's mouth to open and shut like a fish. Ignoring the other man studiously, Jayne reached down and hefted a crate of steel valves effortlessly to his shoulder.

"You're strong," River observed admiringly. Jayne instantly grew two inches, puffing up like a rooster. Did Mal say strange? More like_ son-of-a-bitch_.

Mal hauled his own portion of the cargo away towards the shuttle, fuming. River's eyes widened as they followed him. Jayne said some pretty dirty stuff, but the words passing through the Captain's mind at the moment were far more graphic and detailed. Gradually her smile returned, morphing into something wicked. A man with that many cusses in his thoughts was a man who could get hot and bothered without much provocation.

Also, he was _jealous._ Swinging her own load carelessly onto her back, she let Jayne pass her before she did a little victory dance.


	6. Chapter 6

Kaylee dove into the pallet of parts headfirst, like a puppy into a bag of cheap dog food. Mal may have been feeling especially ornery, but the sound of her cooing and clanking around made his lips twitch. The lights flickered and the overhead vents began to stutter, and he resigned himself to a night of ship malfunctions while the mechanic got her rocks off on repairs.

Zoe, River, and Jayne had vamoosed, something about the ocean by night, and a bonfire, and God knows what else. Simon stuck to Kaylee amidships, and Mal suspected that in her current state, the young doc was about to get a crash course in doing the deed on a pile of circuit boards. He hoped they wouldn't break anything too valuable. He had no intention of taking River back to Huntsville. What a tightrope walk that had been. Between the hordes of creepy warehouse hands trying to peer up her skirt, and Jayne filling her head with smut, Mal had worried_ his_ brains were going to start leaking out of his ears. But he needed to nip this line of thought in the bud. Men act like fools around pretty girls, that was the way of things, no sense in letting it get to him... unconsciously, he ground his teeth.

He sat gingerly in the cool dark of the mess hall, letting the knots under his skin slowly unravel. No matter how posh the environs outside his door, _Serenity_ was home, and the only place he truly felt secure. It was, in a broad sense, the center of everything. He often caught himself daydreaming about flying, as if, instead of the ship moving through the verse, it was the verse that moved around the ship, turning and shifting like the winds of a tornado as _Serenity_ herself remained still. The eye of a storm. He leaned back on the bench, sweetly silent.

A shadow passed over his closed eyelids. His hand was on the gun. Now the gun was pointed. He opened his eyes. "Oh!" he said, startled into standing. "Inara. What are you doing?" He blushed as his manners came back to him. "Here, I mean. What are you doing here?"

"Hopefully not getting shot," she responded, laughing nervously. "I had the day off."

"Ah," said Mal, slowly holstering his weapon. "That's... good, then." She slid nearer to him in that way she had, of not so much walking as gliding through air. It made him anxious.

"We should talk," she said, lowering her voice.

"What about?" he managed, breathing through his mouth, trying not to smell her. She smelled expensive.

She was very close now, close enough that she barely had to lift her arm to place her hand along his elbow. She lowered her eyes, seeming to consider the space where they touched. "I realized something today," she said quietly. Her gaze flicked up, pinned him like a bug. "I realized... I can't fight this anymore."

He swallowed convulsively, his heart hammering. "Can't... fight..?" She shifted fluidly into his arms, and then her lips were on his. His hand closed on her silk-wrapped waist, his mind a terrifying blank. She felt him tremble slightly, then, oh glory, his mouth closed over hers and she went up in flame.

He kissed her, thoroughly, as his mind recovered. This... this was something he had turned over and over in his thoughts, something he woke up gasping from, a dream within a nightmare for too many years. She was burning up against his body, and he was unquestionably responding, heat to heat, lust to lust, and yet it was... a reflex. An echo of some passion that had died a quiet death when no one was looking. Slowly, he pulled back, keeping his arms warm around her, and looked at her face until her eyes opened.

"What..." she mouthed dreamily.

"Inara," he said gently. "Don't you have a job to do?" He saw the hurt spark in her eyes and slid another weight onto his yoke of self-loathing. She rallied, not breaking eye contact.

"Forget the job," she said, offering herself up for the first, and perhaps last, time in her life. "Forget all the jobs. Let's run." He looked into her, deeply, and in that moment she felt the unbearable weight of his full intensity. She quailed.

"You know I can't," he said at last. "And you know _you_ can't. Why did you even say it?" Her fingers fell away from his collar, and her eyes filled with tears. She tried to smile.

"It seemed like the appropriate thing," she said, wiping her eyes gracefully and stepping back. Gliding. She gave him one last, lingering look. She could still feel the incredible heat of his skin on hers, the play of his mouth, the hardness of his desire. Her face was full of regret. "Goodbye, Mal," she whispered sadly. Then she was gone.

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He felt... free. Free floating. Disconnected and inert like helium in a balloon. It was neither a good nor a bad feeling. He drifted towards the sea.

His family was gathered around a massive driftwood bonfire, sea salt making the flames spark green and yellow against the darkened sky. Jayne held Zoe in one arm and a three-quarters-empty bottle from the Earth-that-was Distillery in the other. Zoe wept against his filthy shoulder freely. He patted her in silent, drunken empathy.

Simon lay in the lee of a dune, boneless and heartbreakingly young, sand sticking to the black patches of axle grease that decorated his white button-down shirt. His wife was probably still on the ship, rolling gleefully in bits of insulated wire, but Mal knew they weren't really apart. They thought on each other. Mal reeled towards the fire.

River was dancing. Her hair spun out in tangled waves as she twirled, poetry in motion, without rhyme or rhythm. He saw her arch like a plucked string, channeling some ineffable sensation. Time seemed irrelevant. He thumped down into the sand and filled his eyes with her.

She felt his thoughts. Disjointed, confused, familiar. She saw herself through him, and knew that she was beautiful. A new warmth suffused her limbs, that had nothing to do with the fire.

When River had first awoken from her long, cold sleep, her brother had held her, made her feel safe. Simon pulled her out of the puppet strings and made her a real girl once more. She realized that he had become a kind of talisman for her, a dividing line between right world and wrong world. But Malcolm…

If Simon made her feel safe _now_, Mal made her feel as if she had _always been_ safe. As if some vital part of her, some divine spark, was untouchable. No evil thing could touch the River Mal saw, just as no unjust world could break the Mal she saw. She knew that even on the dissecting table, Mal would remain himself, that no knife nor rack nor wretched sorrow could wring from him his inviolate soul. And she loved him for that epiphany, loved him entire, without fear or reservation. She let her arms fall to her sides and turned to him, giving him her face, open and filled with the truth.

He held his hand out to her as she approached, and she pulled him up. Dusted him off. Held herself still as he searched her, for whatever answer, even he didn't know. She felt him settling into the new way of things, coming to grips with it. She half-turned, snagged the remnants of a bottle, then leaned into him contentedly. He moved his mouth to her ear.

"Would you come home with me… tonight?" he whispered. "Would you want that, _ai ren_?"

"_Hao_," said she, and took his hand.


	7. Chapter 7

****Note to readers: I adore you! The thrill I get from your words of wisdom knows no equal. Oh, LittleMender, how you make me complete! A word of warning, if you don't want sex and mayhem, skip ahead, dear reader. Now is the time for innocent hearts to flee. o_o****

She led him through the sand, her long legs graceful and deliberate. Up, past the old-fashioned boardwalk, where splintered boards threatened the tough pads of their feet. Where she eyed him with half indulgence, half blistering impatience while he tugged on socks and shoes and took longer about it for hurrying. Where she pressed into the juncture of his body and kissed him, and blew his thoughts to hell. Then resumed dragging him by his hand (_heart_?) toward the city docks.

They boarded the ship by night, like stowaways, creeping past the emergency lights, him trying to match her silence, her trying to match his speed. River might be a natural gymnast but a lanky man like Mal had a stride advantage in his urgency. They slipped down the ladder to his quarters with faint puffs of relief. He closed the hatch and leaned back against a metal wall, hands behind him, as if he needed to catch his breath, but River thought perhaps he merely wanted a moment to study her. He did look, penetratingly, his expression intense and a little sorrowful and not entirely readable. She cocked her head to the side, waiting.

"I may love you, albatross," he said to her, his mouth a wry twist. She smiled.

Slowly, with great deliberation, she untucked her blouse and began to remove it, starting with the buttons at the bottom, watching his face steadily. His eyes shifted to the pale downy skin of her belly, pupils dilating. Though he didn't move his body, something dark, with fierce claws, stirred in his mind. Her fingers maintained their gentle motion upwards. At last, with a lithe shrug, she let the garment slip to the floor. She wore nothing beneath.

Mal had his bottom lip between his teeth, worrying it. Behind him she knew his hands were clenched. She slid one hand into the catch of her belt. She held the other out to him. "Help me," she commanded, and he came to her. With large, fumbling hands he undid her belt, slid it through the loops, folded it carefully over the back of a chair. His eyes never left her face. He put his palms on the waist of her skirt and she shimmied her hips, loosening it till it dropped to the floor with the rest. He rubbed the soft top edge of her underwear between his right thumb and index finger. The feeling of his fingers dipping beneath the waistband of her panties made her whole body tingle and ache. She half leaned, half fell into his still-clothed chest, drowning, and he bent his sandy head down to her collarbone and kissed her sweating skin.

"Please, please,_ please_," she was chanting, tearing at his clothes, running her thin hands up the hard planes of his chest and tangling her fingers in the soft hair at the base of his neck. One sleeve of his shirt was off, the other still on, his pants still buttoned but the fly down, and when he tried to help her he found her skin pressed too close to fit a hand between them. He settled for grabbing her face and capturing her mouth, kissing her until he could almost taste blood. He had his teeth on her lips, felt his own wildness creeping up to swallow them both whole, and pulled back with a gasp for air that was almost a moan.

She had everything off him now but the pants. He grabbed her wrists. "Gotta... take this... slow," he tried to say, but it came out gutteral, distorted. He pushed her gently down on the mattress, urging her to sit. With one hand on her knee, he gamely used the other to edge his waistband down past his hips, then stepped out of the remains of his clothing and sat beside her.

He gulped a few times, trying to think rationally. So maybe his shorts were well-worn, had a few holes, compared to what she was wearing, which was some bit of white lace nothing designed specifically to drive him out of his gorramn mind. She shifted towards him, incidentally driving the hand on her knee further up her leg and giving him a look that rode the line hard between frustration and starvation. His heart hammered. Apparently his ragged clothes were not an issue.

He reached for her, pulled her into his lap until she was straddling him. As she settled down onto him - _god _damn_ that felt good_ - he lifted a hand and brushed the hair from her eyes. He saw himself reflected in her pupils, and felt a surge of something almost unbearably bright burst in his chest. He dropped his forehead to hers, nuzzled her. Too raw to speak, he kissed her face; her eyelids, nose, mouth, chin. At last he found the sweet spot just under her earlobe and settled there, running his tongue over her nerves until she remembered her hips and _pressed_.

His harsh exhalation was hot against her neck. He dug his fingertips into the muscles of her rear and pressed his good hard teeth against her shoulder, rocking her slightly. "Mal..." she breathed, tipping her head back to let him get at her throat. "Please, o _tai hao le_ Mal..." He dipped his rough hand between them and touched her, still rocking, and she howled.

Their undergarments were off, discarded, detritus in the gravity field of their mutual destruction. He felt the graceful pressure of her core against his erection and wrapped his arms around her body, desperate.

"_Bao bei_," he ground out. "I don't want to hurt you." He met her eyes, black with need, and stilled himself for her answer.

"You won't," she gasped. "That's over, worries done." She wrapped her hand around him frantically. He grew stiller.

"How do you mean, love?" asked Mal, his voice like a winter night.

"Oh, god," she gasped, wanting. She pushed against him. She felt his breath, uneven against her onslaught, but his mind implacable. "A thing of power. Ambitious men. Say what happened if you have to say!" she said, and ground her body against him.

"Oh, River," he wept. Wept for her, his tears like lava burning new paths through her skin.

"_How is it worse_?" she rejoined fiercely. "_How is it worse than they already did_?"

"I am _not_ that," he proclaimed, and her heart leapt to him like a moth to the flame. He pushed her down, down against the lumpy futon, down where all her senses filled with him and honed in excruciatingly on the gentle quake of his hand. "I could not," he murmured into her neck, his fingers drawing her up to some new reality. "I'm yours," he admitted, and she arched up into him, powerless and triumphant. "Do with me what you will."

He groaned as she came around his fingers, fast and hard. "Inside," she commanded, sobbing, wrapping her skinny knees around his ribcage. The two seconds pause made her shake. _ O, this eternity of milliseconds_! Before he slid home, replacing the nightmares for good, filling her up until she melted with joy.

"Yes! Yes! _YES!_" she affirmed, as he surged against her, as he made it real. She felt him shivering, shaking his way towards the light, and tightened her whole body around him like a vice.

_"_Oh! _River_…!" he said, letting go at last, shaking with the seal.

"You are my true first," she whispered fiercely to him, as he closed his eyes against her skin. "You are my _only_."

He could only repeat that he loved her, over and over, until they both crashed headlong into sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

She woke in increments. Pieces of thoughts strayed into her head, and out again. Presently she was aware of her body, and a deep, pleasant ache in the muscles of her abdomen and thighs. Of the warm pressure of his head against her stomach, his left palm under her shoulder blades. He breathed slowly, evenly, and did not dream.

He loved her. That knowledge was a live coal in the center of her chest, so hot it almost hurt. Her hand lifted of its own volition and burrowed into his hair. A little sticky with dried sweat, but surprisingly soft. Like the skin beneath his eyes. Or just over the curve of his hipbone. Or… her face flushed as the memory of him came clearer. Maybe her grip tightened a little, because she felt his eyelashes brush her belly, and it made her twitch.

He made a little questioning noise against her skin, still half asleep. "Hrm…? Ah…" She felt him slowly come awake.

"You tickle," she accused, using her fingers to make his hair stand wildly on end. He apparently liked that sensation, because goosebumps broke out over his forearms. "Pretty lady," he murmured huskily, and it was her turn to shiver. He felt it, and raised himself up on his arms to look at her.

"You cold?" he asked, eyes full of sleepy concern. She shook her head. "You… ah, you sore?" She gave him a Cheshire grin and looped a languid leg around him. "_Very_," she purred. That focused his attention. He sat up, studying her "sore" spots in a way that made her squirm. "I," he announced, "know a cure for that." Her eyes widened. He bent his head to his work.

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Mal, she thought later, was not a man who left a task half-done.

She felt as though every bone in her body had been melted into goo. The horrible bumpy mattress, which before had seemed so inadequate, was now officially the most comfortable surface in the world. She couldn't imagine moving. Well, at least not for a few months. Or maybe an hour, she considered, glancing at the self-satisfied man beside her. One hour. Then he'd find out that payback was a _bitch_.

"I know that evil look," he muttered, raising a brow. "I've seen it before." Faster than a whip, she rolled and pinned him, still panting. "What are you up to?" he asked, smiling slowly. "Shh!" she hissed. "Listen." She covered his mouth with her hand before he could expostulate.

_"What do you mean, you DIDN'T SEE HER LEAVE!_" came a familiar cultured shout from above. Then a female voice, low and apparently placating. Mal couldn't quite make it out.

_"Fer chrissake, it's 6 o'clock in the mornin',"_ Jayne grumbled. The thunk of his boots against the mess floor.

_"I don't give a shit what time it is!"_ Simon insisted. _"Get your lazy, no good, ignorant ass out of that hole you call a bed and FIND MY SISTER!" _The clatter of someone sweeping the place settings violently off the table.

_"Simon!"_ Kaylee exclaimed.

Mal spoke something into her palm. Something that felt like, "Fuck."

_"And where in God's name is Reynolds? REYNOLDS! GET UP HERE! REYNOLDS!_" The hiss of someone trying to shush him. Like that was going to work, thought Mal, rolling his eyes.

_"Captain Reynolds is asleep in his bunk,_" came Zoe's stern voice. "_As he should be. And River's a woman grown."_ Simon made an inarticulate noise of rage. _"I mean to find her, but you need to calm yourself._"

Mal looked up at his lover. She took her hand away from his mouth and looked back, her eyes questioning but unmistakably trusting. Well, damn. He ought to know right from wrong by now.

"You ashamed 'a me, River girl?" he whispered, making it easy for her. She smiled, her face full of relief. "Go on then. Let me cover my hide and we'll head up."

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Mal was feeling every one of his 32 years as he climbed creakily up through the hatch. Simon was already speed-walking toward him, looking wild. "Captain!" he started, breathing a little hard. "Captain, River is -" Mal held up a finger, stopping him. Then he reached down, grabbed River's hand, and pulled her up. "_River_," breathed Simon, for a brief moment feeling nothing but relief.

The others had followed behind Simon and were now crowding the corridor, staring. "Oh good," said Mal vaguely. "Everyone's here." Simon was slowly, shockily taking in River's state of deshabille. Same clothes as last night, but crumpled. Hair like a tornado. Face still a little damp with sweat. And on her feet, what appeared to be a pair of grey, badly mended men's socks. Awareness slid over his handsome face like a shadow.

"Reynolds," Simon started, then had to stop and clear the growl from his throat. "What, exactly, is the meaning of this?" Behind them, Kaylee's mouth was a perfect "o" of surprise. Jayne was beginning to chuckle. Zoe managed to just look massively hungover.

"Hmm," said Mal, thinking furiously. Meanwhile the man in front of him appeared to be converting all the liquid in his body into steam. Pretty soon he would start whistling...

"Did you sleep with my sister!" Simon hissed furiously. "Holy hell, look at her! Did you_ sleep _with_ my little sister_?!" He had shoved his face aggressively close, and the result was… spit. Mal quietly moved River behind him, sheltering her with his body.

"It ain't like that," said Mal, as gently as he was able. "You ought to know I… care for her."

"You WHAT?" Simon roared. "You…WHAT?!" He drew back a fist. In a flash River was between the two men, her index finger digging lividly into her brother's chest.

"_Bai duo an jing yidian!_" she shouted, freezing them both in place. "_Ta de ma_, you think you're the only one who wants to be happy? Look at me!" She stabbed Simon again for emphasis. "I love him. I'll sleep with him when I please! I'll marry him and have a dozen children!" Her expression darkened. "You'll throw us a party," she pronounced grimly.

She must have punctured something with all that poking, because her brother had gone from red to sickly white. "I…" he tried. "I…"

"Aye," she agreed savagely. "_Gou huang tang_." She whirled back to Mal, who flinched. "Something to say?" she spat.

"Who, me?" he asked, holding his hands up in surrender. "No way. Marriage. Dozen babies. Great plan." That made her smile. "Good," she said. "I'm sleepy. _And_ hungry." With that, she popped back down the hatch and closed it behind her. There was a beat of stunned communal silence.

"Guess I've got my marching orders," sighed Mal at last, glancing surreptitiously at Simon out of the corner of his eye. The younger man was still gaping helplessly at the spot where his sister had been. Mal considered patting him on the back, but thought better of it. "Kaylee, I'm going to let you handle this one," he said over his shoulder, and headed to the kitchen to get his girl some breakfast.

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"So…" trailed Jayne meaningfully, as Mal slid scrambled eggs onto a plate. Well, "eggs" was a misleading term. They were a reasonable approximation. Mal turned to the cold storage, looking for not-really-orange-juice.

"Cobb," he said cheerfully as he searched, "I like ya. When I pay you timely you're a real stand-up guy, and you ain't half bad in a fight." He located a container and turned about, holding it. "But it will be a cold day in hell before I discuss my night time activities with you."

"Buzzkill," Jayne grumbled.

"And here's another thought for your penny - call it two for the price of one - you ask River any dirty questions, I will personally shoot you and feed your carcass to something toothy." Mal flashed Jayne a grin that would have made a lesser man soil his pants. "_Dong ma_?" he concluded sweetly. After a moment Jayne, having determined that Mal was serious, shrugged and picked up an old news tablet. Satisfied, Mal loaded the results of his foraging onto a battered metal tray and headed back to River.

"Is he gone?" whispered Kaylee, sneaking in.

"Ain't like he's gonna eatcha," snickered Jayne. "He's got something tasty already."

"Well, _that's_ completely disgusting," said Kaylee in her normal voice, heading for the cereal. "How's Doc?" Jayne prodded evilly. She sighed.

"I ain't sure. Last I saw him, he was in the med bay with a bottle of sedative in one hand and a shot a whiskey in the other. Said he didn't feel too much like talkin'."

"So what? You'll give him a few minutes to sulk before you go back to the non-stop jumpin' his bones?"

Kaylee gave him an injured look. "Hey! He's had at least half an hour already," she said. "T'ain't healthy for a man to wallow."

"Some things are well worth wallowin' in," said Jayne thoughtfully. She rolled her eyes and stuffed a spoonful of cereal in her mouth.

"It's really Zoe I'm worried about," she continued through a mouthful of mush. "I mean, I figured after everything that's happened, she might be sweet on the Cap'n. Don't you think?" Jayne issued a dismissive snort. "Well why not?" she asked him. "They've been together practically forever. They like the same things, and they do most everything like partners anyhow."

"She ain't his type," said Jayne patiently, in the tone a man uses to explain something complicated to the very slow. "She likes a man as can make her laugh. Ol' sourpuss'd ruin her fun."

"He's not a sourpuss," Kaylee responded fondly. "Mite cranky some mornings but he's real witty when he wants to be."

"Pshh," said Jayne. "I kinda thought he and the whore might be getting it on. Reckon I was wrong on that. He don't seem like a multi-tasker."

"Oh, Jayne," sighed Kaylee reproachfully . "You shouldn't talk about her like that."

"And why the hell not? I mean, she _does_ sleep with men for money, right? Or is that just a rumor?" He favored Kaylee with a nasty grin. She put down her spoon and folded her arms.

"Inara's a lady," she said firmly. "Aww, heck. I don't suppose she knows yet." The mechanic shook her bright head ruefully. "She won't like to hear it. Not a bit."

"Alls I ask," said Jayne fervently, "is when you tell her, you let me _watch_."


	9. Chapter 9

Sometime after breakfast was over, but before the lovebirds had reappeared, the Companion re-boarded the ship, wrapped in dark blue satin and looking romantically wan. She wandered the hold until she came across a pair of booted feet sticking out of a hole in the hull. "Kaylee," she murmured forlornly to the boots. "I need you."

The other woman began squirming out of the mess of pipes and wiring, lower half first. "Hey! Inara," she managed breathlessly as her face appeared, covered in strange, chalky red smudges. "What's up?"

"Come up to the shuttle and let's talk about it."

"Oh… okay. Lemme just, hmf, find a towel there…" The younger woman scrubbed at her hands and cheeks with a questionably clean rag, then stood and followed her friend up the stairs. They entered Inara's quarters in tandem. Kaylee sought out a chair, tugged a bath towel down from a cabinet to cover it, and sat. One time she'd been a little tipsy and gotten blue builder's chalk all over a velvet floor cushion, and she'd caught Inara furiously scrubbing it in the sink later, lips pressed thin. Ever since then she put a barrier down between herself and Inara's things. "So how ya been?" she began chattily.

"I've been better, darling." Inara paused delicately. "I'm afraid the time has come for me to leave _Serenity_ once again," she pronounced.

"Oh… oh." Kaylee's voice was very small. "So you already know, huh."

"Know what?" Inara said, sucking in her breath a little shortly. "That Captain Reynolds is an insensitive clod who couldn't make a commitment if you held a gun to his head? Yes, I've _become aware_." She let her face fall into her hands and rubbed her eyes in frustration. "Maybe that sounded a bit harsh to you, but honestly… what more could I do? I can't live like this." Suddenly her head jerked up. "Wait a minute, how did you know…? Did he say something to you?"

"Bwuh? Who, me? No, he sure didn't. Not a peep," said Kaylee quickly. "I mean to say as, I have no idea what you are talking about. I just… um… intuited that the two of you weren't as close as you used to be, that's all."

"_That's_ the understatement of the year," Inara replied, laughing bitterly. "I might as well lay it out for you. Last night I came to visit Mal, wearing my heart on my sleeve… and little enough else. I offered him everything, and he threw it back in my face without so much as a whimper. I can honestly say I've never been quite so thoroughly rejected in my entire life." Her half-smile tightened into a grimace. "What I don't understand is _why_."

"Huh," said Kaylee, twiddling her thumbs nervously.

"We've always had such a connection," Inara continued. "I thought it was his pride that made things so impossible, but even when I offered to give all this up, he still… gods, he looked at me like I was mad. He wanted me, oh yes, I could tell that much at least, but… it was like I was trying to open the door to my house and found that it had been barred against me in the night." She patted her knees absently, crinkling and then smoothing the fabric of her dress repeatedly. Her expression was uncharacteristically vacant in thought, no small development for a creature who almost unfailingly set the scene.

Kaylee felt that her eyes might be bugging out of her head, so she wisely directed them at her lap. "That seems real strange, I guess," she offered weakly.

Inara sighed, shifting her lean body into a new pose. "Regardless, I can't stay on this ship after what happened. New Dunsmuir is a good place to get back on my feet, so I've decided to pack my things. I'll have them removed before you depart."

Kaylee nodded, simultaneously sad and relieved. "I'll miss ya," she said, reaching out to grab the other woman's hand. Unfortunately this seemed to galvanize Inara. She studied the mechanic's expression and posture critically.

"Kaylee," she said slowly. "What do you think happened between the Captain and I?"

"Aw heck," said the girl miserably. She glanced up and found Inara's eyes boring holes into her skull. _That's it. The jig is up._ "I think maybe he got tired of waitin', sweet pea."

"Tired of waiting." Inara's tone was deceptively light. "I wonder what you mean by that." No immediate response. "Please explain," she prodded bluntly, too intent for more niceties.

"Well, um. Maybe he figured you were never gonna work out, so he started, I dunno, lookin' elsewhere?"

"Elsewhere."

Kaylee floundered. "Like, the cockpit?" she blurted.

Inara's tone was clipped and incredulous. "Are you saying that Mal and Zoe are seeing each other?" She tossed her head.

"Not Zoe," managed Kaylee, blushing a furious rose. For a moment the raven-haired woman's expression was completely blank. Then it darkened, a typhoon brewing.

"_River Tam_?" she whispered blackly, and the ensuing silence filled her hapless guest with dread.

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When River slept, she had no filters.

Night after night of screaming nightmares led others to believe the past troubled her, but this was a simplistic view of things she rejected without comment. In truth it was a process. As a fitful REM cycle took over, her shields fizzled out, leaving her vulnerable to whatever emotions filled the atmosphere. When the people around her were happy, her dreams were peaceful. When they were sad, she wept into her pillow. When they were angry... oh, when they were angry, she cried out. Like needles in her brain.

Part of what made Mal so indispensible was the quality of his sleep. Yes, he had bad dreams, perhaps more often than most, his unconscious face tightened with scar-like lines of pain. But even in sleep he rarely raged. What he sought in the ether was purpose. Peace. Freedom. He frequently dreamed of himself as a bird, drab and light, fighting his way through smoke or autumn rain. In the best dreams he burst forth into the sunlight and soared for miles.

That first night, after love, he had dreamed of the ocean. Warm water, the feeling of wet sand sucking at his feet, the sensation of seaweed pressing against his legs with the tide. As he sank into the dream he changed, his body smoothing out and streamlining, until he swam in sunlit shallows. She crawled into his mind to watch and feel, and after a time he seemed to feel her there. She became the weeds against his body, the sand against his belly. She became the sea and the warmth of the sun.

She hadn't slept like that since she was a very small child. It was one of the best feelings of her life. And now was one of the worst. Tonight, even curled up against Mal's anchoring peace, she felt the daggers at her back. Simon, whose love had always been unconditional if a little one-noted, projected a steady stream of helpless fear and disappointment, which Kaylee amplified with guilt and worry. Jayne and Zoe were perhaps too wrapped up in their own evolving discourse, but she felt Zoe's troubled mind escaping to probe at her like a tongue to a bleeding socket. Worst of all, from above them she could feel the Companion. A font of black, bubbling rage had sprung up in that woman's heart, all of it directed at River.

As her eyes drooped closed, her Id began to seethe. She gripped the blankets till her knuckles went white, but she couldn't fight it. Couldn't fight. She went under, and her hands reached out to claw at Mal's torso as the scream welled up in her throat.

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A knock on the med bay door broke him free of his thoughts for a moment. It was the first night he'd spent away from Kaylee in... he couldn't remember how long. But he'd needed to think. Even if thinking was like scratching a healing burn, he'd been unable to resist the itch. With a flash of irritation bordering on fury, he shoved the mostly empty bottle of liquor away and rose to answer.

Ah, the man himself. Speak of the devil, Simon. Speak of the devil and he'll fucking appear.

"What the hell do you want?" said Simon in a low voice. Mal rubbed a callused hand over mussed hair.

"Yeah, okay," he said, with a rare touch of apology. "It's River. She's having a bad night."

"Too much to handle already?" Simon snarled. "That didn't take long." As soon as he said it, he wanted to take it back. He watched Mal's face slowly change from exhausted chagrin to something dark and chilling. What _was_ that? There was a long beat of silence between them.

"Right," Mal drawled. Simon realized it was disgust. Complete and utter disdain. Mal was looking at him as if he had caught him beating a girl. The captain turned stiffly to go.

"Shit. Wait!" Simon called, voice cracking. A pause. Mal didn't look at him, but he was listening. "I'm... I'm a little messed up, okay?" said Simon, his tone pleading. "_Wait_. I'll get you something to help." He crossed into the lab, rummaging clumsily through the drawers. Where the hell was it? Some brother he was. Some fucking big brother.

"Here," he said at last, returning to the hall and pressing a packet into Mal's hand. "This'll take it down a notch. It's not perfect, but..." He trailed off. After a moment Mal met his eye, and he felt an inexplicable rush of relief.

"What is it?" Mal asked creakily.

"It's a TAAR blocker," said Simon. "It... uh... blocks the receptors in her nose and brain that respond to pheromones. I'm not entirely sure why it works, something got messed up when they stripped her amygdala, but... it helps. I promise." Mal looked down at the tiny foil wrapper resting in his palm.

"Thanks, Doc," he said at last. Then he walked away down the hall. Simon let out an unsteady breath.

Then he quietly closed the clinic. Time to go home. To Kaylee, and to bed.


	10. Chapter 10

****Holy smokes, y'all, I'm sorry this is so late. It seems I've built myself a fine case of writer's block. I'll try to get around it by writing 100 words a night until it goes away, but please accept my heartfelt apologies. And thanks, thanks, thanks again for all your kind words - they mean so much.****

She washed up on the shore of consciousness, coming to it like bits of a ship wreck: piece by piece. A warm surface. A net of sheets. A pervasive ache, like muscles limp and wasted after an influenza.

Artificial light prickled at her eyes. She opened them, saw him at his mess-strewn desk a few feet away, dressed and waiting for her. Like Superman, she used her X-ray vision to peek beneath his clothes.

"Did I hurt you?" she asked hoarsely, one hand sloughing through the covers to rest on her heart. His eyes flickered towards her, regarding her with warmth and caution.

"Few measly scratches ain't enough to het me up," he said with a careful smile. "You want my attention, go for the ears." Her lips twitched despite herself, and his face lit up like a candle.

"I love you," she said, rendered bare.

"Yeah, yeah," he grinned to himself, rubbing a hand over a stubbly chin. "Marriage, ten kids." She froze, considering. He watched the cogs in her machinery click through the implications of passing on her genes. Her amber eyes fixed on his feet. "Don't worry," he said in response to her silent alarm. "I know _exactly_ what you mean." Slowly, trying to stifle it, she began to laugh. He threw back his head and laughed too, a long beautiful sound from the depths of his diaphragm. "Damn," he gasped, still chuckling.

"You should work on your abdominals," River observed clinically. He rolled his eyes as he got back his breath. "Yeah, I'll get right on that. Right after I fix this heap of a ship and find some new business partners." He climbed up out of his chair, rubbing his midsection. Then tipped her a wink. She flopped gracefully out of bed, seemingly unaware of the fact that she was mostly naked, although she felt a secret frisson of pleasure spark up her spine when Mal's eyes settled involuntarily on her ass. By the time she had located suitable clothing (a button-down shirt - his, and a pair of cotton shorts - also his), his face had turned a curious plum color.

"We should go help the others pack up for departure," she stated briskly. She rummaged in his chest of drawers, came up with an old water-proofed Glock he kept for the occasional concealed carry. She checked the chamber, engaged the safety and slid it into the waistband of her (his) shorts… and watched his brain completely short circuit.

"Ayuh?" he replied, staring.

"Inara wants to leave the ship and stay here," she said quietly. Once the words passed through his lust filter, his face clouded. But "Mmm," was all he said.

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He made his way up to the shuttle at noon port-time. Though he knew better than to doubt River's observations, it was still an unpleasant surprise to find most of Inara's things already in crates. He surveyed the exposed metal surfaces, hands on his hips. Behind him, almost stepping on his heels, Kaylee entered, then stumbled with a little gasp. "Cap'n!"

"Ma'am," he rejoined, one eyebrow lifting ironically. Kaylee took refuge in outrage.

"You skeered the crap out of me, Malcolm Reynolds!" she scolded, hugging herself for good measure.

"Well beggin' your gorramn pardon," he said, crossing his arms. "Thought I heard something go _bump_."

"Aw, well," she dithered, her accent going thick. "That were probably me." Despite the situation, he had to stifle a grin. Kaylee had a tendency to get increasingly cute when cornered. He gave it back to her in spades.

"So I'd a-gathered," he said, looking stern. "Plannin' a little elopement with that there companion, are we?"

"Shucks," said Kaylee, clearly better at this game than he. "Iyas just lendin' a helpin' hand, thassall!" That did it for him. He cracked up. She beamed, relieved.

"Well. Isn't this cheerful," said the companion in question, her tone venomous. Ah, Inara. She even looked serpentine. Gorgeous, sinuous, all ivory skin and emerald sari and flashing, almond eyes. A quick needle of near-regret pierced him. After everything that had happened, she really had no right to look that damn beautiful.

She watched the smile drain from his face and it burned her. Oh, it burned. She'd walked in to the remnants of her old life to find him, and Kaylee, effortlessly filling the space with the warmth and comfort she'd thought was gone from this room forever. _Oh no, Inara, it's not the shuttle that's haunted. It's you. _

"I heard you found a… permanent position on Beaumonde," he said neutrally, breaking their eye-lock to glance around the room. Hell. Was he giving her an out? In the course of their association, he had fought with her, spat at her, avoided her, and crowded her in turn, so that this new gracefulness from him made her want to scream. _I don't want your kindness!_ she wanted to say. _I never asked for an ounce of pity from you._

"It seemed prudent to cultivate my options here," she stated, her voice clipped. "After our discussion the other night." Now she waited for him to lie. To tell her she was always welcome on his ship. To tell her nothing had to change if she didn't want it to.

"You always were a savvy one," he said instead. He gave her a half-smile that broke her already wounded heart in two. "I always knew I never had to fear for ya. You'll do well no matter what or where. Just…" and here he had to pause to clear his throat and look away again, "…you know, call. If you need anything. We'd all like to hear your voice, any time." Across from the two of them, Kaylee gave a heaving, sniffling sort of sigh, and hurried past them out of the room, carrying a half-filled crate like a shield.

Inara knew she ought to let things lie where he had just cast them. That she should take the gift he was trying to give her now. She found, to her own dismay, that she could not. The black anger that had possessed her since yesterday surged to the surface, poison on her lips.

"I just want to know: what was it, in the end? What tipped the balance between me and the… teenager that currently warms your bed? Am I too old? Too experienced? Too independent? It's true I'll never _need_ you the way she obviously does. And perhaps there are charms to her particular brand of madness that I simply cannot.. fathom." She wrapped her arms defensively beneath her breast, unable to stop the bitter chill that flooded her limbs.

"_Fuck_, Inara," he cursed, pinching the bridge of his nose. She waited for his rage to wash over her. She even welcomed it. But it didn't come, and when she looked at him again, she could see him tamping the last of it down, replacing it with a wretched kind of empathy. "I…" he began, then shook his head. "No, god dammit, I loved you. You're right. I loved you for years. And if you want to get right down to it, I still love you, in a sick kind of way." He began to pace, shoving his hands in his pockets savagely. "But don't you see, Inara? It _is_ sick. It's a sick sort of love we had. And knowin' that, and taking you up on your… offer… it's as good as lockin' you in a cage, or shootin' myself in the foot to get out of my duty." He blew out a massive lungful of air. "Okay, so I ain't so good with the metaphors. But we both know what would happen. I'd kill your spirit, and you'd… you'd…"

"I'd what?" she spat. "Massacre your honor? Your dignity? Or just your soul?"

"Naw," he said tiredly. "I ain't got much of any of 'em left to stamp on."

"Then _what_?" she shrieked. "_What is it!_"

"My peace," he muttered at last, moving close so he could meet her eyes. "You bring out the wolf in me, Inara. And _I can't_. I can't be that man again." He folded her in a final embrace, then. At first she beat his chest with her fists. She slapped his cheek, hard enough to leave a stinging mark. She writhed and howled against the cage of his arms, maddened. Then, after he'd borne it silently for several minutes, she went limp against him, and the tears came. She cried into his shirt, and imagined (or did she?) she could feel his own warm saline marking her scalp. When he let her go, she was a snotty, unrecognizable mess. But it was okay. It would be okay.

"You call," he said stiffly as he walked away.

"I will," she whispered. Then reached up and began to re-pin her hair.

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After fifteen minutes of furious weeping, Kaylee decided that her residual energy might as well go towards something useful. Or at least, less depressing. She climbed up to the med bay, filled with a wicked sense of purpose. Hips settling against the doorframe in a sleek slide, she regarded her prey, who currently sat at his desk picking morosely at a pan of dragon's breath noodles, dark hair flopped over his brilliant forehead like a hood.

He noticed her with a start. He tried to hide it, but she saw him jump in his seat. It made her smile, although the expression was currently more feral than affectionate. Oh, he was ripe for a little fun. "How ya doin'?" was her seemingly innocent preamble.

"Just… you know, working through some things. H-how are you?"

"Bored." She widened her smile, favoring him with a line of gleaming predatory teeth. Don't think she didn't notice him squirming, either. _Something to hide?_ "Say, I thought we might play a game."

"A game?" He raised one dark, perfect eyebrow. An action that never failed to… lubricate her gears. "I guess I could be up for that," he said. "What did you have in mind?"

"I thought we could play somethin' from back when I was a girl," she explained.

Half an hour later the overhead lights were short-circuited and she had him pinned up against a gurney, panting her name in frantic bursts. "Oh God!" he bit out, struggling to keep his hands on cold steel and out of her hair. "Please… _please_… whatever you do, _don't stop_…!"

She lifted her head immediately. He looked down at her, desperate. "Wha…?" The look in her eye was something he could only describe as evil. Evil incarnate.

"You didn't say 'Simon Says,'" she stated. And raised one perfect auburn eyebrow.

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Inara looked back at the dock with a mixture of sadness and something surprisingly akin to nostalgia. Leave it to Mal to give her that strange long-view of things, a perspective that made even this present agony seem ultimately harmonious. She shook her head, smiling in spite of herself.

"Lady Inara?" said an attendant. She smoothed her expression, trying to place this face. Ah, yes. One of the senator's aides.

"Forgive me," she said, replacing her expression with something warm and contrite. "I have a few valuables I must attend to, and then of course we must depart." She quickly gave a set of instructions to two cargo loaders, along with a signed storage contract and a discreet but generous tip. "Shall we?" she asked the aide.

Whisked away in a dark car. Old fashioned, rubberized wheels on the ground, heavy iron-based alloy construct, primitive shocks. Devastatingly expensive. She leaned into the cushioned seats with a faint, neutral sigh, relishing the feel of the road's imperfections jolting up through the old car's metal frame.

The penthouse was an oasis. She moved to the open platform that was her hired bower, using the darkened glass around her bed to check her face. No sign of tear-tracks. A trace of smeared kohl under her left eye. She rubbed it with one precise finger, blurring it into her supple skin. Then, exhaling, she slid out of her sari with a shrug, drifting nude down the steps to the lotus pool. It was then that she noticed the aide still standing, watching her.

A young woman with bright honey-blond hair. Straight bearing, crisp uniform, hands clasped behind her back and shoes clicked together. Attractive, in a conventional way. Blank in the face, as an aide should be. Inara considered her carefully. As an initiate Inara had never been much inclined towards romantic feelings for women, but a true Companion flowed like water into the channels of the Fate allotted her. Or him. And the Lady Inara, jewel among women, had been exquisitely trained. "May I help you, my dear?" she said gently, deliberately turning so that her nakedness lay natural and resplendent between them.

At the edge of the pool they stood, less than three feet apart from one another. Inara felt a sudden disquiet. How were they so close? The young woman reached out, her arms surprisingly long and toned. She pressed an arc-thrower to Inara's white, vulnerable neck.

"Oh yes, I believe you can help me," said the woman. The prongs of the thrower dug into Inara's jugular. "I've been observing you. Your companions are… interesting. Did you know that they didn't exist two weeks ago? Surely you did. You seem quite bright, after your own fashion." The woman's eyes bored through, utterly cold. She stepped into Inara's circle of body heat, her continuing politeness somehow overwhelming in conjunction with her implacable menace. "Tell me, Lady Inara," the blond breathed, the words tickling the skin of her ear.

"Who is Benjamin Wilde?"


End file.
